


Coffee Shop AU

by fresne



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU, Crack, International Fanworks Day, International Fanworks Day 2016, Other, Possibly surreal, Silly, Tumblr made me do it, Vague Bond Crossover, alternative universe, coffee shop AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-21 00:46:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6032074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We all live in a coffee shop au. They all live in a coffee shop au. It had to come to this eventually.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Somewhere in tumblr I saw this prompt, which will become clear in a moment. In any event, happy international fanworks day. Not a suggested topic, but since it's the next on the rota, glad to get it in while it's still on time.

The windows of Deductions were tinted black. It wasn't possible to see inside from the quiet street. The name of the place was written in not particularly discrete gold script over the door. There was a small dark green sign attached to that door. At that moment, it read, "Open – Don't be boring!" 

"Fuck, yeah!" Billie turned off her e-cig and put up an alert on the Irregulars app. She'd never managed to be the first to make a sighting. Even though she went out of her way to pass Deductions every day.

Billie was late for work. 

She finished pinging the Irregulars and called in sick with what she thought was an artistic cough. 

When she went in, she knew better than to look for a menu. Patrons of Deductions were expected to observe and be observed. Anyway, the prices were set, unless they were waved altogether.

There was someone already there. A City type in a suit. She didn't know him, which was weird. She went to all the Irregulars meetups. City said, "I want a non-fat vanilla latte with a double shot of expresso. And a banana muffin. You must have muffins." He sniffed, as if by breathing a glass case full of muffins would appear. He should have gone to Hudders up the street if he wanted a muffin. He could have said non-herbal muffin and been fine.

Billie thought very loudly, "Do not fuck this up for me." She'd missed the last three times an Irregular had reported that Deductions was open. In all fairness it had been two, five, and three in the morning.

The gleaming pipes of the glycol cooling system misted over with ice. The Barista sneered. "Get out. You're at best a two." 

Legend among the Irregulars was that the Barista was an avatar of caffeine itself. Given there had been sightings of the place since the dark ages before texting, Billie believed it.

Billie pushed by City and waited to be told what she'd be having while doing her best to observe.

The Barrista huffed at her. "A six. Fine." Turned around and fiddled with switches and dials on what only the profane would call a mere coffee machine. Titrated demonically black liquid into a black paper cup and sprinkled in some white powder with a golden spoon that a heroin addict would have coveted.

"You can't tell me to leave. I'm a customer and the customer is always right." City tried to get into Billie's space, but she had clubber's elbows. He huffed a safe distance behind her. "This is a coffee shop isn't it?"

"No!" The Barista slid the cup across the counter into Billie's snatching hand, but waved off Billie's offered quid. "This is not a shop." The p in shop sounded like a gun fired from a plum tree. 

Billie pushed her way past City, who was going on about yelp reviews. The Barista deduced City as she hurried out. It might be worth it to watch him cry, but she didn't want to be distracted from her brew. She sent a hurry flag to the Irregulars. It was hard to say how long Deductions would stay open at the best of times.

She went next door to Fixed Point and bought a bottle of water for her rent on a table, and sat down. 

She sipped her coffee and posted. "6. Freeze dried goat's cream. Chemex flash brewed Sumatra bean." She thought about it and added. "Like vanilla orchids thrown before the priest king from the pyramid of Huitlipochli in Tenochtitlan."

Within seconds came the comment. "Overwrought. Inexact. LaMancha goat. Mandheling not generically Sumatra. 446 degrees. Also, Huitlipochli was the hummingbird god of war. Xmulzencab was the Aztec god of bees. Get your mythology correct if you wish to be poetic. However, I shall grant that you did notice the Mescal honey on the spoon."

Billie floated in a state of bliss as she sipped her coffee. 

Jenny came in looking shell shocked. "Nine." She sat down. 

"Oh, my god, really!" Billie stared at the steaming cup.

"Really." 

Billie looked in awe at the cup cradled in Jenny's hands. Billie paid for some mineral water for Jenny. Billie knew better than to ask for a taste. It might be a nine, but the Barista at Deductions made the cup that was perfect for you in that moment.

She savored her own cup and idly looked around the coffee shop while Jenny quietly gasmed over her coffee.

A groan rattled down a ventilation shaft. Billie smiled up at it. "Right back at you."

It was good to be alive.

+++

Mike blinked at the daylight. He was too old to pull swing shift, but with influenza knocking over residents, needs must, devils driving, etcetera. His feet took him to Fixed Point without much thinking. It was always open. Fortunately, Doc was at the counter. The swarm of college students sometimes manning the percolator were frankly terrifying. Doc was alright though.

Legend at Barts had it that Doc had been a medic in the Boer War or WWI, which was ridiculous. Doc wasn't nearly old enough for anything past Afghanistan. But hospitals lived on caffeine and gossip. 

Mike made his way past the hipsters who sometimes clung with religious fervor to paper cups by the door. Most of the regulars at Fixed Point were from Barts. Except between 9 and 11 when any ex-military were served a cuppa and a bickie for free. 

He didn't order the coffee. Doc's coffee was utter shite. Instead, Mike sipped his cuppa and nibbled on a Cornish pasty that Doc brought in from Hudders up the street. A non-herbal pasty.

An investment type shoved his way through the door and proceeded to start his order with a complaint about the place next door. Mike sipped his tea and sat back to watch.

Doc raised an eyebrow and poured Investment type a cup of coffee from the pot that legend said was reheated each day and possibly watered with cat's urine. Mike was fairly certain that percolator had been going since the 50s.

Investment sipped his coffee, sputtered, and headed for the door. Mike almost suggested he try the café in the government building on the next block. There were legends about that too. But Mike was full of virtue and tea, and didn't say a thing.

Doc called after Investment Type. "That'll be three fifty." Chuckled at the answering slam of the door.

Mike sipped his tea. It was never the same, not that Mike could have told one brew from another, but a cuppa at Fixed Point was always what the doctor ordered.

+++

Mariah said, "You're laughing maniacally over the spanners. Please leave. Get some lunch." She pushed Q towards the door. "And no more coffee." Q let her because he had been laughing manically at the spanners.

He was fairly certain Mariah had meant leave the building, but that was unnecessary when there was a perfect cafeteria upstairs.

It was admittedly on the first floor of the above ground portion of the building. It was theoretically a mid-level government office. Despite the heavy security to get in, it was open to the public. 

The cafeteria was decorated in government bland with a picture of the Queen between windows with views of a brick wall or the quiet street. The glass was bullet proof. That wasn't the most interesting part about the glass. 

Q picked up a tray and went to the food dispensary. There was no menu or choices at the cafeteria. Hands reached out from the long low rectangle in the wall and pushed a plate out under the sneeze guard. No one had ever seen the staff at the cafeteria. Not even Bond. Q had had to forcibly stop him from using the nitro pen on the wall once he realized that there was no door into the kitchen. 

Q ate all his meals in the cafeteria. He was not messing with his source of food.

The plate was followed by a glass full clear bubbling liquid. Q wasn't in the bio division, but he had an idea that wasn't exactly water. He slid his ident card through the reader to debit for the meal. Sat down in a booth that looked uncomfortable, but was actually quite a nice. He tapped a spot on the table and turned his view of the brick wall into sunset over the Orkneys. The windows could also do London, but Q wasn't in the mood for CCTV.

He was halfway through the most subtly delicious pesto chicken that Q had ever eaten, when bliss was interrupted by someone who didn't belong.

It happened sometimes. Someone came for a form. Sometimes tourists wandered in.

This was not a tourist. He looked like an investment drone. Mid-thirties. Q tilted his head to look at his shoes, but there was nothing interesting hidden in them.

The man ranted his way into the serving area. He'd had problems with service at the coffee shops around the corner.

Q winced. The man should have gone to Hudders or possibly the Cardboard Box Ferret for a pint.

Steel walls slammed down. There was a hiss. When they came back up there was no one there.

Q ate the rest of his sandwich. There were reasons he'd told Bond to leave it. The cafeteria had been there since Queen Vic. It would be there when there when there were colonies on Mars.

"Speaking of which," he told the Orkneys, "I should get back to what I was doing." He put his tray in the rotating slot in the wall opposite the serving area and went back to work.

+++

There was a picture of a ferret in a cardboard box over the door. This particular local didn't actually have a name written anywhere, but that wasn't really a problem. 

It wasn't really the sort of place where everyone knew your name.

It was a block from New Scotland Yard. Mostly, CBF was full of the Met on any given point in the day or night. They came to forget, give each other shite, and karaoke on Tuesday. 

The beer was beer. The ale was ale. The cider was cider. The karaoke was about what you'd expect. The bartender did not keenly observe exactly which of the above a given customer might want. But there were free salty nuts in bowls, no ads in the loo, and a truly lovely curry if a soul strolled in before 10pm. Also, most customers were there for a pint. 

Which was exactly the bartender's division.


	2. But wait there's more

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because the previous bit featured no anthropomorphic porn.

The remnants of a Roman temple to Mellonia hid tiled bees under the bricks of Bazalgette's sewers. Centuries of underground as the buildings above pushed up. 

There was a tunnel connecting the basement of Deductions with Fixed Point. 

Glycol pipes crossed Deductions' basement ceiling. There was an acid vat bubbling away. There were drying racks and glass tubes. That was for the experiments that went on upstairs. 

The pressurized hot water pipes wouldn't fit in Deduction's space. It was necessary for them to twist through the tunnel into Fixed Point's basement. Absolutely necessary to encroach and impose. To tightly screw bolts into the cement. To grip and hold on.

Fixed Point did not mind.

The ventilation from Fixed Point gusted warm air across one of Deduction's heated ball-valves. Sucked an intake of air over another. 

A ball valve popped up under the pressure. Super-heated steam hissed. Heated the metal of Fixed Point's ventilation shaft to a rosy glow. The buildings groaned as they shifted on their foundations. Groaned and shifted and exhaled steam into the cold morning outside. Not that anyone understood what it meant. 

Although, the occasional pedestrian to did stop to inhale the scent of mandheling coffee and gunpowder tea mingling in an on-going experiment. 

But this was only a coffee shop au, and they had no idea what that meant.

**Author's Note:**

> If after reading my fiction here, you would like to read more about me and my writing check out my profile.


End file.
